Red Label
by ulstergirl
Summary: Ned comes to Nancy seeking comfort after suffering a personal tragedy. Adult content.


**This story contains coarse language, nonexplicit consensual heterosexual sex, and the (offscreen) deaths of two secondary characters. In other words, potentially disturbing content. You have been warned.**

**That having been said, the unedited version is available at the website. **

* * *

If he had devoured her whole it would not have hurt like this. 

"They're gone, they're gone."

She couldn't do anything. He just paced around her living room. Brown hair rumpled and his shoes sliding over the floor. He wasn't picking up his feet anymore and his hands kept rising, finding nothing, falling again to his sides. Rising again, falling again. He hadn't taken off his jacket, once she'd let him in. The expression in his eyes had stilled her tongue, frozen her heart sick in her chest, and she had retreated, almost afraid to touch him.

"Gone."

She perched on the arm of her couch, feeling useless. He didn't see her. If she put her arms around him and stilled that perpetual movement, it would begin, the grief tight in his throat. He wasn't even pacing. The rough rectangle over the hardwood was nothing calm. His tread was so heavy that the coffee cup, abandoned and cold on the low table, rattled at his perpetual approach and retreat.

"Ned."

The low syllable was swallowed. The coffee cup rattled again. Nancy's fingernails tightened on her jeans and he brushed by her again.

"Fucking—" he gasped. "Fucking car accident."

"Ned," she whispered, the blood draining from her face. "Oh my God."

"They were here this morning." Rising and falling. Rising and falling. If she touched him he would scream. No skin, just the raw throb of veins and tears. "They were here. She was—my mom, my mom..."

Nancy extended her arm and he walked into it. His head snapped up. His brown eyes were swimming.

"Ned."

"Nan..."

She put her arms around his waist and pulled him in close to her. "I'm so sorry, Ned. I'm so sorry."

--

The phone had rung a lifetime ago but she had pulled it off the cradle and left it buzzing angrily to itself. She had an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label somewhere in the chaos of her cupboard but if she left him alone for more than a minute she was afraid of what she would find when she came back.

"Nancy."

Not that she would have been able to make it to the kitchen. Somewhere between stroking his back and telling him that it was somehow going to be all right, he was on top of her, and she was pinned between him and the couch, her arms tight around him. She could hear his every breath because it began as another sob. She had never heard him like this. Never.

"It's okay."

He shook his head. His face against her shirt. His chin brushing against the tops of her breasts. "What am I going to do," he whispered, his breath hot against the fabric.

"I don't know," she whispered. Her cheeks were already wet and swelled from her own tears, and she stopped the low steady circle she was tracing over his back to rub her palm over her face.

It wasn't going to be okay, but she had to say something, even if it was meaningless and hollow, even if she was just mouthing it over the terrible emptiness that yawned inside her every time she breathed.

She couldn't remember the day that her mother was gone. Not anymore. She only remembered believing that her mother was on a trip, on vacation, and it was taking longer than ever before. She would be back. She wasn't gone forever. She couldn't be gone forever.

She couldn't even remember her mother's face outside the scrolled silver frame on her father's dresser. The bedroom was her father's, never her parents'. Boxes full of carefully folded and wrapped shirts and skirts and shoes and scarves, stiff with age, in pools of sunlight in the attic on lazy summer afternoons. She could never remember a pale faintly perfumed wrist in the fluttering sleeves or the flash of shapely leg under the skirts, the smooth graceful throat beneath the pearls her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. Among the snapshots of her on birthdays, her arms looped around Bess and George's shoulders, posed at the foot of the Eiffel Tower or waterskiing on the lake, she kept a photo album of her mother. China-blue eyes and blond hair, her father's hair still dark, his face unlined, as they leaned together over their daughter, three candles on the cake.

Hannah Gruen and Edith Nickerson. Her mother's pearls at her throat, the delicate silver clasp under the thin lever of her fingernails, and Ned... Ned's father.

"They looked—."

He couldn't finish and she slipped her arms around him again, feeling his chest swell with another breath. "Shh," she whispered.

"Nancy, there was so much blood."

_They'll be back, they'll be fine. They're just gone on a long trip. When I walk back into that house with you..._

No more cookies just out of the oven. No more frantic readjustment of clothes and limbs just before the key turned in the lock with the return of his parents, the sheepish smiles and rehearsed carelessness in their remarks. No more Sunday dinners or twinkling in Edith's eye as she made thinly veiled allusions to how good Nancy would look in white, on her son's arm. No more.

"Ned, you can't," she began. "You—"

He shook his head again, tilted his face up to look into hers. "I can't," he said. "I can't, fucking, go to the funeral home tomorrow and pick out boxes to put them into the ground. I can't fucking stand there and watch the pastor say they didn't suffer, that they're in a better place. His shirt was open, they worked on him all the way to the hospital, his legs were just—his legs, the side of—oh my God. He wasn't dead in the car. All the way there. They _hurt_." His eyes gleamed.

"And now you hurt."

"Nancy." He gasped in a breath again and she shifted underneath him, pulled his face back down against her shirt, closed her eyes as he cried out into her skin. "They can't be gone."

She rubbed her palm over his back and the words were meaningless so she didn't say anything.

"I can't do this." He reached up and rubbed at his eyes, the side of his palm brushing against her breasts, but he barely noticed. "I can't walk back into that house. I feel so fucking—" He gasped in another breath.

Nancy ran her fingers through his hair, watching as a fresh wave of tears slipped down his cheeks.

"Stay here tonight," she said.

--

When the thin veneer was still intact, he would spend the evening at her place and after dinner, takeout or homecooked, they watched movies with their feet propped up on the coffee table and made out. After two glasses of wine or midnight, whichever came first, they shared a last long kiss at the door before he left for his own apartment and she chained the security lock behind him and went to the solitude of her bed. The only night he'd had a third glass of wine, she had ended up in a position very like the one she had spent the fading afternoon in, underneath him, but pinned only by his hands, the unbearable depth of his kiss.

He didn't protest or make excuses about leaving when she flipped off the lights throughout her apartment. He followed her to her bedroom, and after she came out of the bathroom, her teeth freshly cleaned, in a faded worn t-shirt and little else, he was sitting at the foot of her hastily made bed, still fully clothed, his eyes glassy. His right fingers twitched against the quilt.

"Are you tired?"

He shook his head. "I'll never be tired again," he said, his voice desolate, and she came to him without further conversation, stood between his open legs and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him against her chest. He slipped his arms around her and rocked and she stroked his hair, over and over, her fingertips slipping over the top of his ear, his forehead, the back of his neck.

After a long moment she leaned down and kissed the crown of his head. "You need to lay down," she whispered. "Can you do that for me?"

He nodded, moving mechanically, reaching for his shoes. He unlaced them and kicked the into the shadows beyond her bed, lifted his arms and let her pull his shirt off. "I'm supposed to be stronger than this," he said softly, and shook his head. "Supposed to." He looked up at Nancy. "It hurts so much."

"I know," she whispered. "I'm here. I'll be here. It'll be—" she sighed, sensing the futility of the words even as she said them. "It'll get better."

He didn't respond, other than to meet her eyes again, but his held no hope.

After a beat she went to her dresser, looking through for any of his clothes. She liked to sleep in his college shirts, and she remembered stealing a pair of his sweats, pulling the drawstring tight to keep them from falling off when she wore them. "I have something you can wear," she called over her shoulder, straightening again.

He was behind her, looping an arm around her waist, and when she turned his miserable stricken eyes were gazing into hers. "I'm okay," he said, his voice rough.

"Okay."

When she had imagined it, it had never been like this. The entire afternoon she had done nothing else, just whispered meaningless words and rubbed his back and shushed him when he raged. She was drained. She thought she would be asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

He kissed her and she gasped when he backed her against her dresser, his tongue immediately deep and insistent in her mouth, his palm sliding against her side and under her shirt. His thumb slipping just under the elastic of her panties.

"I need to feel something other than this."

Her stomach tightened but she nodded and pulled him down to her again, returning his kiss. He took the hem of her shirt in a clenched fist and pulled it down until it was tight against her breasts, her chest swelled and straining against the fabric. When they pulled apart he turned toward her bed, and she had just pulled down the covers when he stopped her, pulling her shirt over her head and tossing it into the darkness. Reflexively she bent her arms to cover her bare breasts before turning to face him.

His breathing was ragged. "Tell me now," he said.

Nancy looked down and slowly let her arms fall loose to her sides. "I love you," she whispered. "And I—" She slipped her arms up around his neck, and he touched his forehead to hers, his brown eyes filling her swimming vision. "Ned, I never wanted you to feel this way. I am so sorry."

The first kiss was slow, aching, gentle. She could feel his hips sliding just against her inner thighs, his tongue dipping into her mouth. She let her fingertips trail over the back of his neck, against his shoulder blades, and sighed when he pulled back.

"You're all I have left," he whispered, pressing his lips to hers, his kisses brief and gentle. "I love you so much, don't ever leave, don't ever... not like..."

"I won't leave you," she whispered, slipping her fingers over his cheeks, her fingertips coming away wet with his tears. He searched her eyes and she folded her legs up around his waist. "I won't leave you, I swear I won't leave you. I love you."

"I love you." He trailed kisses over her face, her breath coming in warm gasps against his skin. "Nan." 

When they parted she drew her legs together and lay for a long moment, her eyes closed, feeling every distinct heartbeat as it pulsed between her thighs. Ned rolled to his side and gazed at her, his expression almost nervous.

"Ned?" she whispered, opening her eyes, turning her face to find his again. He gazed down at her and she smiled at him, faintly.

"Nan," he whispered, and traced his fingertips down the line of her jaw. "Nan."

She pulled herself up and groped at their feet for the covers, and when she lay back down, pressed the line of her body against his and pulled the quilt over both of them.

"It was supposed to be perfect," he whispered. "It was supposed to be slow and beautiful and perfect and instead... the worst day, the..."

She reached up and drew his face down to hers, kissed him slowly. "It was perfect," she told him. "It could never be anything else."

"Nan," he whispered, and kissed her again, slow, lingering.

"Go to sleep," she whispered, when he pulled back again. "I'll be here." She traced her fingertips down his cheeks.

He nodded, and his eyes were still gleaming. "I meant everything I said," he breathed, and put his arms around her, skin to skin, his lips against her forehead. "I love you, Nan. I've always loved you. I wouldn't have been able to get through today without you, and tomorrow..."

She nodded. "Whatever you need," she whispered. "I'll be here. Whatever you need me to do, I'll be here. I love you so, so much."

He sighed. "Just don't ever leave."

She ran her hands over his hair, soft slow strokes, her eyelashes fluttering down as exhaustion claimed her, their limbs tangled close. "Never," she breathed. "Never."

--

When she woke she distantly remembered the feel of him again, her face wet with his tears. When he turned to her, when he began the slow question of a caress, she swallowed the pain and the grief and held him.

"Nan."

She was in the shower washing the faint trace of blood from her aching thighs when he came into the bathroom, and she pulled back the curtain. "Come on in," she said.

"My God," he whispered. "Nan."

She looked down, then back at him. "It's okay."

"Are you all right?" He stood at the lip of the tub but didn't step inside. "I know we..."

She reached for his hand and when she pulled him inside, he obeyed. "You took my virginity," she said softly. "You knew that."

"Hurt."

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. "Not as much as you," she whispered.

He wouldn't stop touching her and she didn't want him to. Not at the pharmacy counter, not the tight squeeze of their hands in bone-knuckle white when they pulled up to the funeral home. They both thought the first pill, then the second, would make it stop, make it less, but at the end of that terrible day when she wearily keyed open the door of her apartment, the look on his face, the expression in his eyes, the tremble of his fingers was the same she had seen twenty-four hours before.

"You have to eat."

He shook his head, mutely. His fingertips hard in his palm.

"Ned." She put her palm against his cheek. "Please."

He pulled away from her, roughly. "No," he said. "I don't. I'm not." He came around the counter. The brush of his thumbs against the back of her neck, fingers digging into her shoulders. "If you're hungry, go ahead and eat." He kissed her, his teeth against the skin stretched over the tendon between her neck and shoulder. Then he reached beyond her to the cabinet, his fist closing around the neck of the bottle. "I'll be in the other room with this."

She closed her eyes when he was out of her sight, in the living room, pillowed her head on her folded arms and felt the first tears sting her eyes. She felt slow and sick with exhaustion and fear. She had been able to lean on him so many times, and now, he was coming apart in slow pieces. The funeral home director had been soft and understanding but every second in that place was another that she could sense his control slipping. He was incoherent with grief and the words would not come. Only the rage. Rage and pills that didn't work and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red in his shaking hands.

A bowl of microwaved canned soup and a pack of crackers and she sat down next to him on the couch. The orange bottle of pills in her purse. He poured another two fingers into the glass.

_I need to feel something other than this_

He shook his head when she offered him a spoonful, but she took his jaw in her hands and slipped the spoon between his lips and he swallowed, nearly choking. She handed him a cracker and he let it rest on his palm for a long moment before he brought it to his mouth for a bite.

"Good," she whispered. "Good."

His shoes and his shirt came off, his belt, his jeans. In deep darkness, in the glow of the television, they waited. When she took the empty bowl of soup, half of which she had forced into him, back to the kitchen, she swept up the bottle too, waiting for him to grab it, to protest, but he didn't. She came around to the back of the couch and stood, slipping out of her shoes, looking down at him.

Her boyfriend of seven years. Her lover of a single night.

She loosed her watch and slipped it off, laying it on the coffee table as she sat back down, and in a smooth movement he had swept her into his arms.

"You're not gonna let me get drunk."

She shook her head. "You probably shouldn't be drinking with those pills," she told him, running her fingertips over his cheeks. "I'm sorry."

"Do you even want me here?"

"For as long as you need to be here," she reminded him. "As long as you want me, I'm here. I'm not going to kick you out."

He nodded slowly. "I need something," he breathed. "I need to stop feeling this way..."

She had already promised she would be at his side for the funeral. She had already promised. Wearing black, her arm around his, and she knew that whatever strength he had while standing at his parents' graves would be hers alone.

Now she reached down and pulled her shirt over her head. Silk and lace and then his hands cupping her breasts.

"Stay with me tonight."

He had been gentle, before. Hesitant. Now he was insistent, shoving her jeans down, impatient and demanding. The bed still lay in disarray and he carried her to it.

"Don't—" He traced the tip of his nose over her cheek, his breath warming her skin. "Don't want to hurt you again."

She kissed him, the tip of his chin, the angle of his jaw. "You won't hurt me."

After, she nuzzled against his palm, gasping for breath, her knees pulled tight together. "Nancy," he breathed. 

The first tear slipped down her cheek. "Tell me you love me..."

"I love you more than anything, I love you, I love you." He pressed kisses over her temple, her cheekbone, her jaw. "God."

She returned his kiss, when their mouths met. Her lips were trembling. "Sleep," she whispered, and ran her fingertips over his hair. "Go to sleep." Her arms around him, rocking him gently.

He rested his forehead against her collarbone and sighed. "Tell me love me."

"I love you," she replied. "I've always loved you. Go to sleep. You're safe."

He shook his head and nuzzled against her. "You make me forget," he whispered. "You make it stop hurting. Make it stop."

The second heartbeat between the ache of her thighs. She ran her hand over the back of his head, closing her eyes. Her flesh tingling as his mouth trailed over her skin. "Always," she whispered. "Sleep."

--

Another pill.

He was so gentle in the morning, sharing the shower again. After he had fallen asleep, she had lay stroking his hair until her limbs were slow with exhaustion. She could feel the raw sting of blood between her thighs again, aching every time she moved, every time he moved suddenly in his sleep and she tensed in anticipation of an encore performance.

But he was slow and perfect with her, and in the reality that rushed back during their afterglow, she remembered that two hours would bring a limousine to her door to pick them up. She pulled herself up, running her hand through her wet hair, and he struggled to sit up with her. "Better?"

She pulled his face to hers and kissed him slowly. "Perfect," she whispered, crawling into his lap. "And I'd love to stay here but if I don't dry my hair right now, it's going to look terrible."

The service was graveside. In the limo on the way there he never released her hand, their fingers laced tight, his head bowed. She slipped her arm around his shoulders and he took a long breath before pulling her across his lap, letting his forehead rest against hers.

"Ned," she whispered. "I'm here."

"How can I do this," he whispered. "Stand there and shake hands with everyone. In that house."

"It'll be okay," she whispered. "We just have to get through it. It's okay. I'll be with you. They'll understand, they know this is hard."

"It's fucking impossible," he gasped.

She put her arms around him, tight, and felt him shake. "We'll be okay. We'll be okay."

By the time they reached the cemetery his face was set hard, tight. Black suit, black tie, white shirt. He had never looked more handsome. She swept her hand over her skirt, and laced her fingers between his, setting her shoulders.

"We can do this."

He nodded, once, his mouth tight. "Yeah," he muttered.

Next to the closed coffin they stood, still as statues, the wind blowing ties and skirts. Bess and George barely lifted their heads the entire time, and Nancy's father stood on the other side of the coffin with Hannah Gruen. Ned kept staring at one brass handle, set in dark walnut, not looking at the pictures she had helped him select, the flowers, the minister. Whenever the minister mentioned their names Nancy felt him flinch and squeezed his hand. He released a breath as though it was all he could do to keep from sobbing aloud, and let his chin fall another inch toward his breastbone. When they moved to lower them into the ground, he turned to her silently and she slipped her arms around him, holding him tight. "Shh, shh, it's okay," she whispered, and he was shaking. "It's okay. It's okay."

"Nan..." He turned his face into her neck. "I can't do this. I can't do this."

"It's okay. It's okay. It's almost over."

"This is the rest of my life," he gasped. "The rest of my life. Oh my God. Christmas. What the fuck am I going to do."

She stroked the back of his head. "We're going to go to your parents' house and shake hands and listen to everybody say how sorry they are even though they will never know how you feel right now, and it is going to be one of the hardest things you'll ever do."

"Don't leave me alone," he whispered.

"I won't," she promised. "I won't."

The ride to his parents' house was terrible. The rest of the evening was worse. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, beside him, and in unison they nodded solemnly at the condolences, the handshakes, the casseroles and flower arrangements. Bess and George hugged them both, as did Hannah, who appeared to have been cooking for the entire weekend.

"I'm so sorry." Over and over. In the end it was a blur of black and carefully composed faces, plates of food and the soft hum of murmured conversation and Ned pulled her outside when the sun was low in the sky and the chill of night was just perceptible in the air.

"I need you."

"Ned," she protested, her hands fluttering uselessly, coming to rest around his shoulders as he kissed her. "I'll stay with you tonight but we can't do this now, not with—not with everyone inside..."

He shook his head. "You don't understand," he whispered, his eyes gleaming with tears, and rested his forehead against hers. "I need you tonight, I need to wake up and see you there beside me tomorrow morning, on Christmas morning, every morning, every day. I need you for the rest of my life, Nancy Drew."

She closed her eyes. "Ned, your parents just died," she said. "You're hurting, and..."

"You think I'll wake up tomorrow and not feel this way," he said. "You're wrong. I've wanted... this... for so long. I never meant for it to happen this way but it has. And I." He let his head fall to her shoulder, his arms tight around her. "I never, ever, ever want to wonder, not about this. I never have."

She turned her head and pressed a kiss against his cheek, leaving the trace of demure lipstick on his skin. "Shh," she whispered. "Shh. It's okay."

"It's not okay," he protested. "Can't you see that."

She kissed him again. "We need to go back inside," she said. "We'll talk about this later. I promise."

He nodded. "Okay," he said softly.

The mourners noticed when his strength began to lag, his carefully constructed mask began to fall. After Nancy waved goodbye to the last one and maneuvered enough around in the refrigerator to fit the last casserole inside, she walked back to the couch, where Ned sat with his tie hanging loose around his neck. She started to knead his shoulders under her knuckles, and he let his head hang loose, his torso swaying with the motion of her hands.

"I feel like," he whispered, and she leaned forward to catch it, "like any minute she's going to come walking through that door with grocery bags hanging over her arm and ask me what I want for dinner. Like she's just been away for a little while. Like Dad's just on a business trip, for the weekend, for a little while."

Nancy moved around the couch and sat down next to him. "I felt the same way," she told him, and clasped her hands against her knees. "Like my mom wasn't really gone."

His face crumpled and she reached for him. "She's never going to walk through that door again."

"No," Nancy whispered. "If this is too hard, we can leave."

He sniffed and shook his head. "Maybe... maybe, Nancy, they're going to be back tomorrow, all of them, going through everything, can you..."

She nodded. "I'll be here. And if you want to stay here tonight, we can."

She shivered, her hand in his, as they passed the closed door of what had been his parents' bedroom, the cold and empty remains of their life together. "Okay?"

They stopped short in front of his old bedroom and she reached up to stroke the tears from his cheek. "Ned, it's all right, it's all right..."

He started to cry then in earnest and she wrapped her arms around him tight. "Ned, it's okay. It's okay. Let's go lay down, okay? Here." She pushed open the door and they stumbled together into the middle of the room, surrounded by the old trophies, the framed pictures of the two of them, the Emerson banner. The bed made by his mother's hands. "Here," Nancy whispered, pulling back the comforter and sheet, and he sank down to the mattress when she led him there.

"Do you still... do you still not believe me," he gasped, and rubbed his palms over his wet cheeks. "I need you."

Nancy stepped out of her pumps, unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head, standing before him in a black silk slip and thigh-highs. "You have me," she told him, sitting down beside him, rolling her stockings down her legs. "As long as you need me, you have me."

He tossed his suit jacket across his desk chair, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants. "The rest of my life."

"Then that's how long you have me." She met the surprise in his tearstained gaze with a smile, then helped him pull his undershirt over his head. "Lay down."

He obeyed, pulling her down next to him, and she stroked his cheek, the tip of her nose pressed to his. "Okay," he nodded. "You know what you just said."

She smiled at him. "I know you aren't thinking clearly," she told him, running her hand through his hair. "I know that two months from now we might be on my couch drinking two glasses of wine each and then going to separate beds again."

He shook his head. "Mom kept asking me when I was going to do it," he said, his eyes welling up again. "Take my great-grandmother's ring and ask you to marry me. I bet right now she's..."

Tears pricking her own eyes, Nancy leaned forward and kissed him. "I bet right now she's happy," Nancy whispered. "Looking down on us."

He pulled her tight against him and buried his face in her hair. "I don't know what I would have done without you," he whispered. "I don't know what I would ever have done without you in my life."

She kissed the base of his throat, the faint beat of his pulse under his skin. "I love you," she whispered. "I love you, I love you..." She pressed her mouth against his forehead, his eyelids, his wet cheeks, his lips. "It's going to be all right," she whispered. "It's going to be all right."

In the morning he held her hand tight as they crossed his parents' room, to his mother's dresser. Her hairbrush still lying there, as though at any moment she would walk back in and pick it up again. He took a deep breath and pulled open a drawer in her jewelry box.

"It's been in my family for years," he said, his mouth curving up in a sad smile. "Now you're my family."

She took it in her palm. "It's beautiful," she breathed.

He nodded. "It's yours."

She looked down at it for a long moment before she slipped it onto her left hand, then pulled his face down to hers for a kiss. "I love you," she breathed.

"Always have," he whispered. "Always will."


End file.
